Page 153 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

The Composers’ Guild of Great Britain and “unofficial” musical diplomacy …
43
and to the eventual ‘Declaration’ signed by key participants. While, as Jul-
ie Waters has discussed, the Prague Manifesto stopped short of prescribing
compositional methods or condemning individuals, it did indulge in So-
viet-style condemnation of American popular music and of modern musi-
cal ‘extreme subjectivism’, instead emphasising the importance of nation-
44
al culture. It was also dominated by communists in positions of influence
(Example 2). Tikhon Khrennikov had seized control of the Union of Sovi-
et Composers following the events of January 1948, and both Bush and his
countryman Bernard Stevens were communists. Finally, the Declaration
invoked a loaded Cold War term by calling for a union of the progressive
composers and musicologists of all countries, a body that was subsequent-
ly created as the International Association of Progressive Composers and
Musicologists. 45

Example 2: Signatories of the Prague Declaration 46
A. Estrella (Brazil)
V. Stojanov (Bulgaria)
St. Lucky, A. Kypta, A. Sychra, Jar. Tomásek (Czechoslovakia)
Roland de Candé (France)
M. Flothius, M. Rebling (Holland)
O. Danon, N. Devcic (Yugoslavia)
Denés Bartha (Hungary)
Zofia Lissa (Poland)
Hanns Eisler (Austria)
A. Mendelsohn (Rumania)
Tikhon Khrennikov, Boris Yarustovsky, Yuri Shaporin (USSR)
Georges Bernard (Switzerland)
Alan Bush, Bernard Stevens (Great Britain)

At this point, it is useful to return to Bush’s influence with the Com-
posers’ Guild. Unsurprisingly, Bush instantly lobbied for the Composers’
Guild to affiliate to the IAPCM and began gauging opinions ahead of a
meeting set for July 1948. Some replies were surprisingly receptive. Arthur
43 See: Julie Waters, “Proselytizing the Prague Manifesto in Britain: The Commis-
sioning, Conception, and Musical Language of Alan Bush’s Nottingham Symphony,”
Music & Politics III, no. 1 (Winter 2009), https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0003
.102; Jaromir Havlik, “The Prague Manifesto after (almost) Sixty Years,” Czech Mu-
sic (2007), https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Prague+Manifesto+after+(almost)
+sixty+years.-a0166034668.
44 Waters, “Proselytizing the Prague Manifesto in Britain.”
45 Ibid.
th
46 Nicolas Slonimsky, Music since 1900, 5 ed. (New York: Schirmer, 1994), 1068.

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